Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Commission (EFCC), Mohammed Abba Umar, has explained that the organisation was slow to establishing state offices, because it banked more on the values obtainable rather than the spread.
Responding to a question on why EFCC was not budgeting for establishment of state offices, he said the Commission under him had at a time contemplated closing its Nasarawa office, because “it was not providing any value in terms of our investigations”, adding that prior to the appointment of his predecessor, Ibrahim Magu, the organisation had only eight offices, before five more were added.
He also reiterated the need for establishment of special courts for anti-corruption cases, for purpose of speedy delivery of justice.
He made the call on Wednesday while defending the 2021 budget proposals and performance appraisal of the Commission’s 2020 budget before the House of Representatives committee on drugs, narcotics and financial crimes.
Umar further informed the panel that N29,861bn has been proposed for the 2021 budget made up of N24.407bn as personnel, N3.600bn overhead and N1.853bn as capital expenditure.
While listing the challenges of the commission, he said “we need to have special courts to try corruption cases. We also have lack of personnel and security officers.
He explained that its planned recruitment of staff in 2020 was halted to the unforeseen outbreak of COVID-19.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Isa Dutse in his remarks earlier commended the EFCC for judiciously applying its 2020 budget, as he requested the Chairman to at a later date, provide details of its capital expenditure to the committee.
